NoBs Digital Dogbowl

A Hidden Way To Punch Up An Image

Here is a neat little trick I learned from a seminar I attended a few months back and have been playing with more and more. It is a little tool that is hidden under Image menu, but first you will need to change the mode of your image from RGB to LAB. If you are not familiar with LAB (which, for you nerds out there, is not pronounced lab but as L.A.B. and, for the super nerds, means Luminous, A and B channels.) LAB color mode does not change the look or colors of your image but does allow you to do some pretty fantastic color and tone changes. In a future post, I will show you how to use this to remove haze from your landscapes, but first, the simple way of punching up the colors in an image.

So, we have changed the mode to LAB with no changes in the color yet. Here is where that hidden tool comes in. It is under Image > Apply Image, something you never would have noticed till I mentioned it. Apply Image takes a channel and reapplies on top of the image just like a copy layer does but jumps right from the Channel pallet to the image. It also allows you change the mode of this for some pretty intense colors and effects.

For example, here we have an image that my son took overseas on a gray day of a gray ship on a gray ocean. Now we could just oversaturate it, but I want to bump up just a certain part of the colors, the cool colors. With the Apply Image open, I can jump through the different channels of the LAB to find just the color I want. In this case it was the B channel which is the cooler color channel. I also changed the mode to Overlay which gives me the color bump I wanted. Because it was just a little too much I reduced the opacity down to 86%. This got rid of the some of bland coloring, gave me a much more cool image, and pulled out the ship a bit more. When you are done you can change it back to RGB for printing.

So outside of ships on an ocean, how do we as portrait shooters use this? Well, with any image that lacks some punch, you could try this or if you just want to experiment (i.e. play around with a image for a new look)

Here is another shot from his ship.

Some colorful flags against a gray sky. Once again I changed the mode to LAB and went to Image > Apply Image but this time applied the LAB channel in the Overlay mode to really punch up all the colors. Reducing the opacity down to 70% gave me just the look I wanted for the sky and ship with just a little bump in the colors in the flags. But knowing that I can improve the colors in the flags with adjustment layers I clicked OK.

First, I changed the mode back to RGB then using the Magic wand for just some quick selection for this lesson, I picked up the sky with many clicks. Then under Select > Inverse Selection changed the selection from the sky to just the flags and ship. Next a Ctrl J to copy this selection to a new layer . Adding an adjustment layer of Curves I linked it to the copy layer with an Alt + Click at the line between the two. (CS or older you can just have the adjustment layer selected and the do Ctrl G to link them) Now, I can go into curves and bump up the color of the flags with just a nudge of the curve. You can use Levels too but I just like Curves for colors.

As you see, I didn't get all the sky but this was just play, and if I wanted a better selection I would have taken the time. However, I hope you get the idea and maybe a new tool to play with.

Good luck and enjoy.

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